What sort of challenges do you face as an independent? I can think of a few: - How to pick a scale, format, etc.? - Nobody to go to for help? - Nobody to battle with? How many independent captains are out there? Do you battle with any clubs regularly? More than 1 club? What can be done to help independent captains? JM
Great idea for a topic. There is nothing conveniently close to me so I have been poking around and not working on any boat seriously. I think this board is actually a help for the independents.
Anachronus. MWC has people in your local area, and the surrounding states give them a holler, they will glad to help out. Visit this site
I have toyed with many hulls and made ones that can fire a paint ball but I love the German pocket battleships and would love to make one of those for RC combat, I need help in learning how to make the guns or if anyone knows of a Canadian source for them at reasonable prices, I would like to put a double turret in the back and a half unit gun in front, with a single unit bilge pump to keep her afloat a little longer (as a rookie I think I'll need one) I have built a few ship/boat models and am ok with the radio/motor/drive aspects, it is the gun plumbing I need help with.[]
Lack of local battle club is what's hurting me .. Vancouver Island BC Canada my location probably hurts too .. as the Washington group is "close" but 5 hours of drive/ferry plus fare/fuel costs really hurt being able to attend battles on a remotely close basis... even a battle group in Vancouver wouldn't be very viable .. so I guess I'm gonna have to try and make my own battle group.
IIRC there was a guy up in the Vancouver area who was building a really nice Princess Royal. It would be great if you got a club going up in that area (I saw you are leaning towards Treaty atm), since I have family in Washington State, I'd definitely be interested in taking a drive up there with a ship to visit some other guys and maybe get a battle in!
Well I suppose Im an independant capt. There really isnt an active club near by so its been hard for me to get hands on help and personal guidance. Plus, all of the rules and politics involved in most clubs... I chose to go Big gun format because IMHO small gun boats look bad. One big barrel thats obviously way out of scale, and the other barrels pointing to the sky. It is just not to my tastes. Id rather have the boats look right like real miniture warships. Im trying to get some of my car buddies into it so I will have someone to shoot at LOL.
hehe then you've never seen a big gun boat with no turret covers and huge curved barrels sticking out of the barbette!
We should probably start a whole 'nother forum for trashing each others' formats. It's not really appropriate for the Independents forum, I don't think. JM
Im not trashing anything. From an aesthetics point of view when i think of a scale model i think of things being in relation...
Well I have seen hundred of RC combat boats. I've seen scale in all the formats and semi-scale and not so scale. Depends on teh Captains in how they decide to build them. Some like everything scale down. Others try but there are some liberties applied willingly and not so willingly due to construction constraints and obstacles encountered. Big Gun mostly to me is not scale due to the mechanisms of the Rotating Cannon systems that mostly can not sit in a barbette or turret correclty to scale. Not the fault of the Captains or the inventors of the systems. I am sure they try their best to accomodate. I don't choose a format based on 'How it looks' though when I first got into it the BIG GUN ships initially started out pretty ugly and out of scale.That being said both formats have seen a lot of build improvements with techiques and equipment and both versions have produced very scale looking ships that appeal to the "Purists" of scale detail. This hobby to me will always be Semi-scale and for me Personal I try to bring a little scale to it for my own personal taste and enjoyment but I always keep in mind that it's not the look of the hobby's ships that got me into this to begin with.It was the pure excitement and fun of pitching a model with working bb cannons and pumps into a battle to score hits and damage and hopefully sink other models tyring to do the same to me. All that other stuff is just FLUFF. It helps and it's great but it doesn't make any of the formats here any better than the other because of the FLUFF. The fluff just gets destroyed or shot off anyway so enjoy it while it's still aboard the model but keep in mind it is not what the hobby is about. If you look at enough ships through all the clubs you will find ships there that appeal to you and others that will not but don't stereotype a club's format over it. I've never played BigGun but I certainlty appreciate their ships no matter what they look like. For me it's the cost factor that keeps me from getting involved. So small fast gun works for me. Cheers.
I didn't mean to pick on you, personally. I just happened to post behind yours, after I noticed a bit of a pattern developing. Those who chose & prefer one format often display a certain amount of "loyalty" toward their choice. Sometimes this takes the form of what others might consider disrespect aimed at another format(s). I know I've been guilty, myself, but as one who has belonged to MWC as well as a Big Gun club, I feel I'm uniquely entitled! [] Part of the "charter" of R/C Naval Combat as I understand it is to bring together, in cooperation & mutual respect, all (or at least most) of the various forms of scale warship combat for the benefit of all (I don't see much representation from the paintball, laser-tag, or pyrotechnic contingents, though, but I'm sure that they'd be welcome, too). Sometimes we may need to be reminded that we need to respect each others' choices that happen to be different from our own. Can't we all just get along, have a big group hug, celebrate our diversity, and AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OK, having gotten that out of the way & thought about it some more, maybe we SHOULD have a forum where we can "let it all out" & talk some trash about each other, & the silly choices that others have made. It might be therapeutic - or even fun! JM
For the guy who wondered how to put a paint ball gun on his ship. 1) you can build a paint ball gun pretty much like the fast gun guns (we did it for the tank combat) 2) you just take a regular paint ball gun and cut the handle off of it and use a car door lock actuater to fire it. Oh yes, you probably have to make a magazine for it too. Again check out RCTankCombat.com for details. Marty Hayes
can you guys tell me what the different clubs are? i've seen more than enough acronyms thrown around to confuse me. And where are there a bunch of players close to wyoming (relatively) in terms of active clubs
I've thought for a long time, that building something like that 1/32 graf spee we've probably all seen photos of, armed with painball cannons would be cool
